October 5 marks the launch of a new sports writing course at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies. Believed to be the first of its kind at U of T, the course teaches the basics of writing, reporting, and using new media to produce work for public consumption.

The course will be taught by Perry Lefko, a sports reporter from Rogers Sportsnet and a frequent Toronto Star contributor. In preparation for the class, The Varsity sat down with Lefko to learn more about beginning a career as a professional sports reporter.

The Varsity: How did you get into sports reporting?

Perry Lefko: I went to Ryerson in 1979 and took the journalism course, and graduated there in 1982. […] I knew all along when I was growing up that I wanted to be a sports reporter. From Ryerson, I began working professionally in the business first in London with the Free Press, and then I came back to Toronto and worked [for] The Hockey News. Then I worked for the Toronto Sun for 21 years, and for the last three years I have been working on my own, freelancing.

TV: What are your primary beats?

PL: Right now, I write a lot about the Canadian Football League for Sportsnet. I also write for Metro News and I cover a variety of sports.

TV: Tell us a little bit about your class.

PL: The class is basically going to be an entry point into learning about sports writing and the various different ways you can do it. There’s professional writing in terms of writing for newspapers and magazines. But there are so many new different ways to write about sports these days—blogs, the Internet—there are so many forms available out there. If you think you know a lot about sports and you think you can impart that, you will be able to get people to start reading your stuff.

TV: The media is changing so quickly. Where does that leave the sports reporter?

PL: The sports reporter needs to be a little bit more diversified. The sports reporter now needs to be able to get stories online much quicker. There are so many ways you can express yourself as a sports writer.

TV: What are the necessary qualities for becoming a sports writer?

PL: I think the first one has to be your ability to write. If you don’t know how to write, it will be very difficult for people to understand what you’re trying to say. Having said that, there are lots of people who are interested in blogs who are not the greatest writers, but what they have to say has value. But you still have to be a fairly good writer. Second of all, you have to be able to tell your story for people to want to read it. The third thing is you have to have integrity because if you’re just going to be sloppy about what you’re putting out there and it has no ethics, people will find it difficult to believe what you’re trying to say. The fourth thing you have to do is be fast because in this changing atmosphere of news reporting, the story that gets out there first is going to get the most traction. Above everything else, there has to be passion for what you’re doing. If you don’t have passion for what you’re doing, it will reflect in the way you do your job, how other people see you, and how your product is presented.

TV: What’s your most memorable sports story?

PL: The one that meant the most to me goes back to a story in ’97/’98. I went to Regina to do a story about a woman who was a curler—her name was Sandra Schmirler. She was a very prominent women’s curler and was very well known in not only Canada, but around the world as being the best curler ever. She was battling cancer, and I approached her wanting to write a story about her battle and how she was winning [it]. I asked about writing a book about her life. The first thing she said was, “Would anybody care?” Right there, it was an example about how humble this woman was. Tragically, she died two months later, and it was a big story in Canada. Her funeral was covered nationally. I ended up writing a book about her life and it ended up being a national bestseller. To me, that was the most memorable story because of how much that woman meant to me as a person, as an athlete, and as an icon.

Lefko’s class begins on Oct. 5. You can sign up until the second week of classes, Oct. 19.